


You Won’t Shame Me, You Should Frame Me

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [61]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Banksy, F/M, Gen, Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who), Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26216836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: How do you solve a mystery like Banksy? Two Doctors turn their minds to the problem.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor & Twelfth Doctor, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: Prompt Fills [61]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/585397
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	You Won’t Shame Me, You Should Frame Me

“Right,” the Doctor said to himself, looking down at the map spread out across the console room floor in front of him. It was a sprawling, complicated affair; it claimed to depict London, but it was devoid of a number of features that would render the capital city recognisable to most humans: there was no Tube, no Thames, and no major landmarks. Instead, there _were_ several glowing three-dimensional flags pushed into various locations, each of them glowing a steady shade of amber and bearing a number, and the Doctor poked number twelve with a morose sigh.

“How is he still doing this?” he asked aloud, as though by speaking aloud he could will Amy and Rory into physical existence in the TARDIS. He supposed he could go and pick them up, but there seemed little point in dragging them along on such a mundane – to them, at least – task, although their inputs would be greatly appreciated. His quarry was – he hoped – human, and given that his friends shared this trait with his target, they might be able to lend some psychological insight into the movements of the focus of the Doctor’s search efforts. And if they couldn’t… well, he was already harbouring a sneaking suspicion that his target may _not_ human, and he offered yet another silent, fervent prayer that they were therefore like him – a passing alien with a fascination for humanity – rather than anything more sinister.

“Who are you?” the Doctor asked, jabbing flag twelve with the sonic and watching as a holographic image of a large, graffitied wall appeared above it, rotating slowly in 3D. The style was unmistakeable and the anti-war message was clear; he tilted his head to the side as he considered it. “Banksy… who are you really? Why the secrecy?”

He sighed, tapping the previous eleven flags and watching each of those spring to life in a similar fashion. Each piece was thematically similar and could be tied to the others based on style alone; each piece was now – perversely, considering many of the anti-capitalist themes in the works – worth extortionate sums of money, and each had been created by the mysterious artist known only to the world as Banksy… and who had steadfastly avoided being unmasked for the past two decades, or thereabouts. It was a mystery worthy of a Time Lord, or so the Doctor tried to tell himself; he wanted to ensure that Banksy wasn’t secretly an alien, or someone whose work was concealing threats to the human race. That was why he’d visited each location and scanned it thoroughly with every device he could cobble together to detect hostile intent; that was why he’d taken secret samples of the paint and checked it for mind-control particles or acids or nerve agents. It wasn’t that he was frustrated by the mystery of it; of course not. He merely wanted to keep Earth safe.

And yes, alright, maybe he had a pathological need to solve the mystery; to be the first person to know the truth. It was a compulsion, with him; the drive and desire to be right and to win the metaphorical race. He knew that Amy and Rory would only scoff at his fascination and discourage him from his quest; would only tell him that he was wasting his time and that the appeal of Banksy was that he was mysterious and unknown, and besides, the world’s media had failed to unmask him, so how could the Doctor think he’d be successful?

The answer was, of course that he was far cleverer than the world’s media; far more adept at spotting patterns; far more skilled at science and detection and tracking and decoding and-

He still didn’t have a clue. Despite loitering around various potential locations – and they had been carefully chosen; he had agonised for weeks over the calculations involved in selecting them – he had still failed to even make a sighting of anyone who could be Banksy, and new artworks were still appearing across the city. He swore to himself in Gallifreyan then picked up his notebook of scribbled theories.

“Number thirteen. Unlucky for some… this time I’ve got a good feeling. This time… I will be waiting. And whoever or whatever you are… you haven’t got a chance.”

* * *

The Doctor frowned and continued walking the legs of his plotting-compass across the map of London that he’d unfurled across his desk on the upper level of the console room. Drawing a long, curving arc through the middle of Soho, he grabbed another compass and walked it roughly adjacently to the first, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth as he drew a second curve and then jabbed his finger at the point where the two arcs bisected.

“Aha!”

He squinted down at the paper, trying to make sense of what he saw.

“Clara, who’s Ann Summers?”

“It’s not a who, it’s a what,” Clara told him tartly, ascending the steps to him with an expression that was half-frown, half-smirk. “It’s a shop; it sells urm… well, it sells sexy bras and pants and… things. You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Never mind. Why?” she peered over his shoulder and let out a long, exasperated huff as she caught sight of some of the markers strewn across the map. “Is this about bloody Banksy again?”

“I need to know,” the Doctor said earnestly. “I need to find out who he is.”

“That’s a bit sexist,” Clara noted. “It might not even be a bloke. You’re making assumptions. Including…” she peered down at the map. “That they’re going to target an Ann Summers in Covent Garden. While it really would be an _excellent_ statement about effing the system, I don’t think it’s exactly the kind of statement Banksy would really be going for…”

“Why?”

Clara let out a long, exasperated breath, then said in an unembarrassed, clear voice: “Ann Summers sells sex toys.”

“It-”

“And things like penis-shaped pasta and straws and things.”

“Wh-”

“And handcuffs and things.”

“Forget I asked,” the Doctor mumbled, sinking down in his chair and turning maroon at the mere idea. “Really, forget I asked.”

“No, you wanted to know,” Clara said sweetly. “Maybe we could drop in and visit that one, really let you get a feel for the place?”

The Doctor had a single, fleeting thought involving Clara, handcuffs, and wispy bits of lace, felt himself turn an even darker shade of maroon, and sunk further down in his seat.

“I’m alright,” he muttered, as Clara snickered. “So… this urm… Ann Summers… not really a symbol of the capitalist heteropatriarchy?”

“Well, it does vibrators,” Clara mused, her tone pragmatic, and the Doctor felt his blush deepen. He was quite sure he was now the approximate colour of a beetroot, and he wished for a breeze of some kind to dissipate his blushes, but the TARDIS steadfastly refused to cooperate. “So that’s quite liberal and feminist, but it _sells_ them, so I guess that’s upholding the capitalist economy?”

“Yes… well… urm… not a Banksy target?”

“Not really, no,” Clara sank into the seat beside him and tactfully ignored the intensity of his redness. “Why are you so obsessed with Banksy?”

“He might be an alien.”

“Oi, as I’ve noted _several_ times, speaking of the capitalist heteropatriarchy… assuming that Banksy is a man is _distinctly_ sexist, and definitely renders you an enemy of the emancipated state of intersectional equity that feminists are striving for.”

The Doctor blinked at her.

“I got that off Twitter,” Clara explained with a grimace. “Don’t make me say it again. Stop assuming Banksy is a man.”

“But he probably is.”

“Why? Because he does art and wants to bring down the system? So do loads of women. Women can want to cause anarchy just as much as men do.”

“I just think he’s a man.”

“I just think you’re being sexist,” Clara said coolly. “Aren’t you supposed to be an intergalactic time-travelling space alien to whom the concept of binary gender is an outdated social construct?”

“Yeah, but-”

“But nothing. Banksy could be a woman – or a non-binary person.”

“Or an alien.”

“Now you’re pushing it.”

“You never know,” the Doctor muttered darkly. “There’s this theory online-”

“Oh bloody hell, you haven’t been on Reddit, have you? There’s nutters on there who think the Earth is flat.”

“Well, there’s compelling evidence that-” the Doctor began in a deadpan tone, then caught Clara’s eye and snorted. “I’m joking. Yes, I’ve been on Reddit, and me and the guys-”

Clara coughed and muttered “sexist’ under her breath.

“Think it’s a bloke. There’s a lot of analysis of the style of art; the scale of it; the paint distribution; it all points towards a bloke.”

Clara got to her feet with a distinctly frosty manner.

“Where are you going?” the Doctor asked. “What did I say?”

“I’m just off to do some feminine paint distribution,” she told him sweetly. “Enjoy Reddit.”

* * *

The Doctor leaned carefully around the corner of the rubbish bin he was hiding behind, looking down the alleyway at the black-garbed figure who was currently spray painting a large, stencilled design onto the wall of a police station. The Doctor was mere metres away, and yet the figure seemed to be wrapped in so many layers of fabric that not a millimetre of skin was visible; on the rare occasion that they happened to glance furtively in his direction, their face was obscured by a scarf pulled up over their nose and mouth, and a pair of dark-tinted goggles.

Carefully extracting a camera from his pocket, he pointed it surreptitiously around the bin and at the figure, and he was about to press the shutter button when he became aware of another figure slightly further down the alleyway, crouched behind a second set of bins but preparing – from what the Doctor could make out in the gloom – to step out and reveal themselves.

Mentally cursing, he pressed the shutter button several times and then watched as the mysterious figure straightened up without warning and revealed themselves as a tall, white-haired man in a long velvet coat.

“Hello,” the figure said in a Glaswegian burr. “Please don’t-”

The artist jumped and dropped their spray can into the bag at their feet, then scooped it up and sprinted from the alley and onto the main road. The Scotsman let out a yell of complaint and took off after them, and the Doctor sighed heavily, getting to his feet and checking the camera in his hands rather than giving chase. The photos were terribly blurry and out of focus; you could hardly make out the figure, let alone what they were doing, and the Doctor frowned; he’d checked, hadn’t he? He’d made sure the exposure and focus were sorted whilst he’d been hunkered down behind the bins; he’d wanted to ensure that he captured the best photograph possible of maybe-Banksy.

As he cursed aloud, the Scotsman returned to the alleyway and aimed a kick at an empty bin, before noticing the Doctor and freezing.

“Who are you?” the Scot asked, stepping forward and activating a motion-sensitive light, which fell across his face as he let out a muttered oath in…

Comprehension dawned on the Doctor then, white-hot and electrifying, and the Scotsman seemed to understand in the same instant.

“Really?” he asked bitterly, his scowl intensifying. “Really? Of all of you, I get the floppy-haired beanpole?”

“That’s rude, coming from the Scottish magician,” the Doctor shot back. “What in Rassilon’s name are you doing here?”

“Staking out Banksy, what the hell else?”

The Doctor felt a swooping sense of disappointment.

“Ah,” he muttered. “So we haven’t… I don’t… solve it?”

“Evidently not,” his future self rolled his eyes impatiently. “I’m going to, though. I’m going to catch him. Cl- my companion says that’s sexist of me, but that was a bloke, wasn’t it?”

The Doctor shrugged, unwilling to commit to making assumptions. “I’m not sure,” he admitted reluctantly. “I tried to get a photo but…” he chucked the camera to his future self, who snatched it out of mid-air and examined the picture onscreen. “Look at that. What would you say that was?”

“A bad photo?”

“But it shouldn’t have been. I checked the focus and the exposure before they got here; that looks to me more like-”

“An Image Destabilisation Filter,” his future self’s eyes widened at the implications. “But that’s… that’s not Earth tech… I _knew_ there was something dodgy about Banksy!”

“We don’t know if-”

“Oh, please,” the Scot rolled his eyes. “As if Banksy just picked up an Image Destabilisation Filter at Ikea.”

“You never know,” the Doctor said weakly. “Could be luck? Could be they… oh, I don’t know… found it?”

His future self affixed him with a bemused expression. “Banksy is an alien,” he said firmly. “Wait until I tell Clara... I told her something was wrong…”

“Who’s…” the Doctor shook his head. “Never mind. What do we do now?”

“Catch them,” the Scot grinned. “And unmask them.”

* * *

The task of catching Banksy proved to be easier said than done. Despite the Doctor’s confidence as he’d stood in the alleyway with his past self, he’d found that predicting when and where Banksy would strike was growing increasingly difficult. He remembered only snatches of what he’d discussed with his previous regeneration, but the words ‘Banksy is an alien’ were imprinted in the forefront of his mind, and he wondered precisely how they – for it was impolite to assume that other species might ascribe to binary gender – were choosing where to target, or how, or when; wondered what their understanding of Earth culture was; wondered why they were choosing to create their artworks.

There had been several near misses. He’d seen Banksy in the flesh twice more, but on both occasions, the artist had sprinted away into the darkness as the Doctor had tried to ambush them, and on both occasions he had returned to the TARDIS empty-handed as Clara snickered at his failure.

“Good for them,” she’d said tartly on the last attempt. “Maybe they’re like you and just very pro-human and anti-establishment. Why do they have to have a sinister motive? Why do they have to be sinister at all? I don’t understand this obsession with unmasking them.”

“I need to know,” the Doctor had mumbled. “I need to know the truth… I just…”

She’d shaken her head and sighed impatiently, and the Doctor’s resolve had hardened; he was now dedicating almost all of his time to the pursuit of the artist, and he’d enlisted – against his better judgment – the help of his previous self in a bid to catch them red-handed.

That was the plan, anyway. They were currently sat at opposite ends of a railway siding, huddled against the cold and trying not to exhale large clouds of vapour into the chill air, as these would serve as giveaways to their position. Between them, Banksy was spraying a mural onto a disused train carriage, and as the Doctor locked eyes with his previous self, he nodded fractionally and then began to inch forwards. When he was merely a couple of metres from the artist, he loudly and deliberately kicked a stone, watching as Banksy let out a cry of fear, snatched up their things, and turned and ran not towards his past self, but underneath the carriage and into the night.

The Doctor swore as he tried to follow and clunked himself on the forehead, sinking to the ground and continuing to mutter bitterly to himself as his previous self approached warily.

“Well,” the bow-tied idiot mused. “We know one thing, now.”

“What?” the Doctor muttered through clenched teeth.

“That is definitely not a bloke.”

The Doctor thought of Clara, and her smug expression when he told her this nugget of information, and he swore again.

* * *

This plan was, the Doctor reasoned, totally fool-proof. He’d run scans; he’d run scenarios; he’d run simulations; he’d planned for every eventuality. He’d scouted the area in which he was sure Banksy was due to strike next; memorised every way in or out; and planted immobilising devices along each route, all of which he’d coded to alien DNA.

He was safely ensconced in the TARDIS this time, watching Banksy work from afar. They were creating a large piece on the side of an abandoned building which depicted space junk falling back to Earth, and he took a moment to admire the subject matter before flicking a switch beside the console and watching as the small electro-static charge he’d rigged in the vicinity of the wall detonated, creating a loud disturbance, and Banksy leapt back and started to run.

“They’re on the move,” the Doctor murmured into the comms device he was clutching in one sweaty, nervous hand. “Heading north-east. They’ll be entering the immobilisation field in three… two…”

Onscreen, Banksy shuddered to an unnatural halt, their limbs splayed awkwardly akimbo as they became tangled in the beam of the immobiliser. The Doctor let out a triumphant whoop and pelted out of the TARDIS and towards the scene, arriving minutes later and finding it exactly as he’d seen from the TARDIS.

“Well, well, well,” a Scottish voice said from behind him, and the Doctor rolled his eyes at the theatricality in his past self’s manner. “What do we have here? A nasty little alien using an Image Destabilisation Sensor.”

The Doctor waited until his previous self was positioned directly behind where the artist was contained before deactivating the device with his sonic, and the Scotsman stepped forwards and wrapped his arms tightly around Banksy’s shoulders and chest, preventing them from fleeing.

“Who are you?” the Doctor asked more gently, approaching them warily and trying to keep his voice low and unthreatening. They had a hood pulled up over their hair and the same scarf over their face as before; their dark-tinted goggles glinted strangely in the amber glow from a nearby streetlight. “It’s alright; we don’t want to hurt you… we just want to know…”

He reached for their hood as they struggled and fought, throwing it back to reveal a shock of blonde hair, and then as he pulled away the goggles and scarf, he gasped.

“Happy now?” Banksy asked in a strong Yorkshire accent, elbowing his previous self hard in the ribs and extricating herself from his grasp as he wheezed out a complaint and sunk back against the nearest wall, rubbing his side.

“But you’re… you’re… you… you’re…” the Doctor stammered, staring at her in amazement as she scowled at him with hazel eyes which were full of fury.

Banksy extracted a silver and amber device from her pocket and activated it, and there was the sound of the nearby immobilisation fields powering down. Was that really his-

“Well done,” she said, rolling her eyes heavily as the sonic fell silent in her hand. “You solved the mystery.”

“But you’re… me.”

“Blimey, was I always this slow on the uptake?”

“She’s…” the Scotsman groaned, looking from Banksy – not-Banksy; his future self – to the Doctor and back again. “You’re… a… woman…”

“It’s a good thing you’re not going to keep any of these memories, isn’t it?” his future self asked with a grin. “Now, chaps, I’d love to stick around, but I’ve got a bootstrap paradox to work on. It’s been grand. We should do this more often. Maybe next time, I’ll stick you in some immobilisation fields. Tit for tat, and all.”

She gave them a jaunty little wave and then snatched up her things, before sauntering off down the street with her backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Well,” the Doctor said, feeling his memories of the previous few minutes beginning to slide out of focus, and he looked at his future self with a grin. “Are we telling Clara this, or not?”

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt:
> 
> _Thirteen moonlighting as Banksy; Eleven and Twelve are each separately trying to figure out who Banksy is and hopefully try to catch him (her?) in the act._


End file.
